


So I've Got a Smile On (It's Hiding the Quiet Superstitions In My Head)

by JackEPeace



Category: I Am The Night (TV 2019)
Genre: 1969, F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 03:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18307568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackEPeace/pseuds/JackEPeace
Summary: Fauna turns around because she can feel Jay’s eyes on her and because she feels like she knows what he’s going to say.“It’s not him.”Fauna purses her lips. “I didn’t-”“No one has seen him since that night,” Jay interjects. “And this…it’s totally different. This is…madness.”Fauna scoffs. “Oh, well, then it’s definitely not him.”





	So I've Got a Smile On (It's Hiding the Quiet Superstitions In My Head)

**Author's Note:**

> Because this crime is one of my obsessions and because I've watched the "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" trailer too many times.

Yesterday, the only thing anyone could talk about was the heat.

Today, it’s the murders.

The headlines make Fauna shiver, like it’s fifty degrees outside and not the middle of summer when everything is hot and sticky and heavy, like a blanket just pulled out of the wash to hang on a clothesline.

She feels that way whenever she sees the story of someone cut down, left behind in a pool of blood. The smiling faces on the front page are all that’s left, Fauna thinks, of whatever was discovered up in Benedict Canyon earlier this morning.

That’s always the way of it: something pretty on the outside to hide the horror of the truth.

Fauna doesn’t buy the newspaper. She lets the man at the kiosk shoo her away, the way he’s done for the other gawkers who won’t shell out ten cents to be in the know. Not that it matters. No one will really care about the facts anyway, not when the story starts to spread. The more sensational the story, the better. The newspaper man might as well just toss the whole stack in the trash.

The blonde on the front page is supposed to be someone famous, an actress in Hollywood that Fauna doesn’t recognize. She doesn’t go to the movies, not often anyway, and when she does she’s clearly not seeing the type of pictures this blonde is in. But still, Fauna feels bad for her. The way she feels bad for everyone who ends up on the front page of a paper because of how they died. She knows the smell of blood and the rush of fear and how it tastes like bile and metal on the tongue.

She knows what it looks like to stare in the face of someone who sees you as an animal and nothing more.

It isn’t until Fauna is standing outside the apartment building where Jay lives that she realizes that this is where her feet were taking her. She knows the way almost better than she knows the path to her own apartment building, the one that leads her to the space she shares with three other people, strangers, who think her name has always been Fauna and who don’t know anything about Jimmie Lee or Tamar or Hodel or who she was in Nevada. They just call her Fauna and pass her cheap beers in sweating bottles and don’t complain when she disappears for a night or two at a time, just like she doesn’t complain when her clothes smell like pot or the music thumping through the walls that keeps her up at night.

Jay’s apartment is by no means quiet. Or clean. But it’s his own, smaller than the one she saw when they first met, and he’d given her a key a few months ago while rubbing the back of his neck and looking anywhere but her face.

Fauna lets herself in now and the door creaks on its hinges as she steps into the room that’s a kitchen and a living room all in one.

There’s a couch that has only three legs and holes in the cushions where tufts of fabric are poking through like wisps of cloud. The kitchen table pulls triple duty as a closet, with Jay’s clothes piled on one end from where he’s pulled them from the basement dryer, and as a work space, his typewriter sitting on the scarred surface.

That’s where Jay is now and the clattering of keys stops when the door swings open and Fauna steps inside. He never looks annoyed to see her and the only part of his face that betrays that he doesn’t mind her presence are his eyes, which tell her whatever she needs to know about him.

“You need to shave,” Fauna says as her bag thumps to the floor at her feet. “Do you have coffee?”

“Oh, hello Fauna, it’s nice to see you too. I’m fine, and yourself?” Jay rubs at his cheeks absently, self-consciously, as though feeling the stubble there for the first time.

Fauna forces herself to frown when her first impulse is to smile. So far, Jay is the only person since she’s left Sparks that makes her want to smile before scowling. “Did I hurt your feelings?”

“No feelings to hurt,” Jay lies, and she lets him. “What are you doing here?”

It’s not an insult or a subtle hint for her to take herself on home. It’s just a question, an absent one, asked while Jay’s eyes are already starting to stray back toward his typewriter.

Fauna pries the plastic lid off the coffee can, her nose crinkling at the staleness of the grounds. “You’re writing.”

Jay looks back at her. “You saw the papers?”

Fauna turns her back to him so he can’t read her face. “Yes.” She came here because of that, because of the papers and the headlines and the smiling blonde on the front page. But she isn’t sure that she wants Jay to see her face and what she can never hide from him.

“My editor has me working on it,” Jay says. “A fluff piece for now but I’m going out there tomorrow.”

She thinks of the paper tomorrow and how the byline this time might be Jay’s. “Who did it?”

Jay shrugs, watching her as she takes two mugs out of the cupboard that she keeps organized. “They don’t know. Yet.”

Fauna doesn’t even realize that she’s tensed until Jay adds that word, tossed to the end of the sentence as an afterthought.

She has dreams about this, or about things like this. About smiling blondes on the front page who are locked in a drawer somewhere now, dead and in pieces. She thinks of him, and how he’d meant to kill her and how it’s been years since that night in the basement and men like him, she knows, don’t just stop.

They can’t.

It’s in their blood.

And hers, too, she worries, sometimes.

“Oh.” Fauna puts her hands on the edge of the countertop. “I’m sure they will.”

Behind her, she can hear the brief burst of keys, a sentence, maybe, coming to life before the sound disappears again, as suddenly as it filled the kitchen. “Hey.”

Fauna turns around because she can feel Jay’s eyes on her and because she feels like she knows what he’s going to say.

In Jay’s eyes, Fauna can see a solemn understanding, the same weary resignation that always crosses his eyes whenever she wakes up from a nightmare or jumps at a shadow. “It’s not him.”

Fauna purses her lips. “I didn’t-”

“No one has seen him since that night,” Jay interjects. “And this…it’s totally different. This is…madness.”

Fauna scoffs. “Oh, well, then it’s definitely not him.”

Jay shakes his head. “No…this is different. Trust me.”

“Okay.” It’s the last part that makes Fauna nod, the request. That is something she can do. Something she’s learned to do since she first came to Los Angeles.

Jay nods, leaning back in his chair. He studies his typewriter for a minute and the kitchen is silent. Only recently has he gotten back into writing pieces for the local papers, freelancing whenever he can. Most of the people he knew before, the men he worked with and indebted himself to, are gone. Moved on to greener pastures or just vanished. The eleven months he’d spent in Hawaii had seemingly erased him from the minds of anyone who might be looking for him and two years of odd jobs -some of which he still won’t mention to Fauna- had ended up in another chance at being a reporter.

Fauna leans against the counter, watching him as he watches the keys of his typewriter. When the coffee finishes, she pours them both a cup and carries them over to the table. Jay takes his mug wordlessly and doesn’t seem to mind when Fauna lingers over his shoulder, her eyes scanning the words on the paper.

She reads the names, commits them to memory. But she tries not to think about the other details, the ones related there in unfeeling black lettering.

Fauna doesn’t even realize that one of her hands has settled on Jay’s shoulder until she feels him shift beneath her, an unthinking gesture that isn’t meant to shake her lose or pull her closer. When they do touch, it’s often tentative and uncertain, like they’re still learning the steps to a dance they’d never thought about doing in the first place. A dance that had started the night Jay had come back for her and his was the first face Fauna had seen upon clawing her way out of the basement.

And, now, three years from that moment, they’re here, in an apartment with water stains on the ceiling and unconquerable mold in the bottom of the fridge. And Fauna has Jay’s key beside her own and she knows without question which she uses most.

And they have these moments of absent touches, where her hand will fit against his shoulder or his will find the small of her back. And they have the other moments, the ones full of intention, moments at night or in the early morning, when Jay will curl around her like a comma, thinking she’s still asleep as he presses his face to the back of her neck.

“I’ve got to finish this.” The sound of Jay’s voice, speaking more to himself than to her, brings Fauna away from the night and back to this moment. “I’ve got another two hundred words.”

Fauna nods, nudging the mug closer to him. “Didn’t you tell me that coffee was a writer’s best friend?”

Jay smirks. “That sounds like the kind of stupid shit I would say.”

Fauna magnanimously decides to remain silent on the subject, though she’s sure that the smile on her face gives her away. She leaves Jay at the table, heading back toward the bedroom that she still considers to be his despite the number of nights that she’s spent here -either accidentally or intentionally. The air is still stifling, oppressive, the kind of hot that makes people crazy, and Fauna pushes the window open because even the weak breeze is better than nothing.

Outside, she can hear the cars and the sirens, the sounds of so many different lives unfolding beyond the apartment. She picks up the book that Jay has facedown on his dresser, absently starting to read from the dogeared page he’d left it open at. But it isn’t long before the heat has her eyes drooping and her head nodding and Fauna falls asleep without meaning to, half slumped against the pillows with her head turned toward the open window and the book caught between her fingers.

It's the sound of murmuring voices that wakes her suddenly and Fauna’s eyes snap open, her heart jumping the way it does whenever she finds herself in the dark, unsure of where she is. It takes her a second to place the shapes in the room as the pathetic furniture that Jay has in his bedroom and the sounds of the city outside bring her back to Earth. Back to the present. She’s not in Sparks. She’s not in the basement. She’s here, still curled on her side in Jay’s bed, the room illuminated in the dying light of evening.

Fauna sits up, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead in an attempt to chase off the thickness that seems to be trapped in her brain. Her mouth is dry, her bones heavy, her body trying to pull her back into sleep even as her brain fights for wakefulness.

It’s the latter that wins and Fauna slides out of the bed, padding out of the bedroom and in the direction of the voices.

Jay has the TV on and the light from the kitchen spills across the room, trying to chase away the descending darkness. The mug from earlier is still in his hands, though Fauna notices that his typewriter is without paper now, the story from before gone, no doubt delivered to his editor while she slept.

“I thought you might sleep the whole night away,” Jay says as Fauna sits on the opposite side of the couch, propping her head against the side of the cushions.

“I still might.” Though now her eyes on the TV, where the news is talking about the blonde and the other people who died with her and even the reporter looks ashen, like he can’t believe the story on which he’s reporting.

Fauna watches, pressing her bare feet against Jay’s thighs and he doesn’t look away from the screen as he lets a hand settle against her ankles. “This is bad,” he says. “She was pregnant, they’re saying.”

It’s easy for Fauna to imagine how she felt in those moments before she died, how it had felt for her to realize that there was someone out there who held the power over her life.

“Probably the husband,” Jay says, as though exhausted by the whole thing.

“Do you think it’s always going to be like this?” Fauna asks, looking at Jay. “For us?”

Jay blinks and for a moment they’re looking at one another in the flickering light of the television. “Like what?”

“All this…death and violence between us. Killing and…” Fauna shakes her head. “Like it follows us.”

Jay frowns and Fauna watches as his brow deepens. “This isn’t about you. Or me. This is just…people. Shitty human nature.”

“I want to go with you, tomorrow. When you go to that house.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“I need to,” Fauna presses. “Just to be sure.”

Jay sighs but she knows that sound. It’s the same sigh he uttered the first time he let her stay the night. The first time he agreed to help her back when she was trying to get to Hawaii to find Tamar. The sound of acquiescence. The sound of him wanting her there and being unable to say the words out loud.

“He’s gone, Fauna,” Jay says quietly and his hand against her ankle feels heavy and solid, a reassurance that tethers her to him.

“Just to be sure,” Fauna says again, a request more than a command.

That sigh again and Fauna knows the matter is settled.

 

* * *

 

The pipes groan long after Jay shuts off the shower but, all things considered, he likes this place. It’s cleaner than the last one -though, so is he- and it’s bigger than the place he had in Hawaii. Sometimes, Jay still dreams that he’s back on the island, even though he’s been in the city now for almost two years. He debates going back, but not with any real energy or thought put into it. The city doesn’t seem so bad, now. Now that he doesn’t have people sniffing around after him all the time and now that he’s writing again and now that the ghosts in the shadows aren’t his only company.

Jay towels off his hair, studying his reflection in the mirror, rubbing a hand across his jaw. After a moment’s debate, he picks up his razor, tackling the scruff Fauna had noted the day before.

Sometimes, Fauna feels like another one of the ghosts that follows him around. The first time he’d seen her again in the city, that’s exactly what he thought she was: another ghost, one only he could see. But the specter had been the girl herself, older but no less quiet and calculating, staring at him with eyes that made Jay feel like she was stripping him bare in five seconds flat.

He’s never given anyone a key to his apartment before and he never minds when she uses it.

Jay can hear her in the living room, singing along to something on his turntable. _It’s beautiful and so are you_ muffled by the closed bathroom door. Sometimes, he thinks that she’ll leave again, that neither of them really belong in this city that has shown them its darkest corners. But, sometimes, Jay thinks this is the only place they do belong.

When Jay steps out of the bathroom, he sees that Fauna has made the bed, tucking and folding everything in the same precise manner they taught her back at the hospital where she worked when she was Pat. Jay tries not to wrinkle the comforter as he sits on the edge of the bed and pulls on his shoes.

Paul is singing about how life goes on when Jay walks into the living room and Fauna lifts the needle off the record. “Ready?”

“You don’t have to come, you know,” Jay says again and it’s the same thing he said to her this morning when she’d taken her turn in the bathroom before him. “You can read all about it in the paper.”

Fauna’s only answer is to slip her purse of her shoulder and start toward the door. Jay follows after her, which is starting to feel like a common occurrence in his life.

The radio keeps them company as they drive into the hills, talking about the crime that’s caught everyone’s attention. The story only seems to build on itself, a snake eating its tail, and Jay feels a little like he’s going into the lion’s den. This, at least, is familiar territory.

“Was it like this? Before? When…you know…” Fauna switches the radio to a song by one of those bands from Britain that all sound the same to him.

Jay knows what she’s asking and who she’s asking about. “Los Angeles has always loved its murder. The Dahlia was on the front page of every paper for a while.”

Fauna frowns. “I’m sure he loved that.”

“These guys usually do.”

They get a quarter mile from the house at the top of the road before Jay has to pull the car onto the shoulder and they get out, weaving around the dozens of other cars choking the space. A portly, sweaty police man is standing by the open gates, his eyes narrowing as Jay and Fauna approach. Jay waggles his camera. “Press.”

“I think we’ve got every reporter in the damn state crawling around here,” the police man says dismissively, shooing his hand in Jay’s general direction. “Beat it. We’ve got people here trying to do real jobs.”

Fauna is trying to step closer, attempting to peer behind the cop, and he waves a hand in her direction. “You bring your girlfriend to lots of crime scenes, huh, pal?”

Jay ignores him. “Look, I just need to get a few quotes for my story, alright? We’re both trying to do our jobs.”

The cop scoffs. “I said beat it.”

Jay lifts the camera, attempting to get a shot of the yard that sprawls out behind the police man, the grass still flattened in places and flecked with crimson. The cop covers the lens just as Jay snaps the first picture. “You hard of hearing?” The officer shoves the camera toward the ground.

“Hey! You want to buy a new one of these? Standing around and chasing people away can’t really pay all that much,” Jay snaps, holding the camera closer to his chest.

The officer’s ruddy cheeks turn even redder as he steps toward Jay. Fauna’s hand on his shoulder is the only thing that keeps Jay from closing the distance between them even further.

“We got a problem?” The voice comes from the direction of the house and at the question, the cop steps away from Jay, his hands falling to the belt at his sizable waist.

Jay follows the progress of the second officer as he crosses the yard, heading in their direction. He’s younger than the first cop, trimmer and clearly more in control of the situation than the cop now standing at attention and pointedly ignoring Jay.

There’s something about him, too, that looks vaguely familiar, though Jay can’t put a finger on it. Though he can’t imagine where he might have crossed paths with this guy before. He doesn’t really make a habit of associating with cops.

“No, no problem,” the first officer is saying quickly, “these two were just trying to-”

“Tamar.”

Fauna’s head snaps up so fast that Jay thinks he might hear her teeth click together. The second officer is looking at Fauna in a way Jay can certainly identify with, like he’s staring at a ghost there in the California sunshine.

The nameplate on the front of his carefully pressed uniform reads _Hodel_ in small letters.

Looking at him, Jay feels unbearably hot, the blanket of humidity wrapping tightly around him and threatening to choke him. It steals his voice, making it impossible for Jay to do anything but watch as the officer, this new Hodel, steps toward Fauna.

She backs up and Jay feels like the action shakes him loose from the heat and the smell of blood he can imagine hanging in the air. “Hey.” He holds up a hand, the one with the camera, like he might need to arm himself.

“Sorry. Sorry. I…sorry. You’re obviously not…” Jay suspects it’s more than the heat that causes Officer Hodel’s cheeks to turn red. “You look just like her.”

Fauna crosses her arms over her chest and her face takes on the mirror-like quality that Jay hasn’t seen in years, like her expressions are nothing but a surface to reflect everyone else’s feelings back at them. “How do you know Tamar?”

Officer Hodel doesn’t answer. “You’re her, right? My…well…Tamar’s daughter?”

Fauna looks sixteen years old again, shivering in someone else’s nightie. Jay blinks the memory away.

“Who are you?” Fauna says, impatient, uncertain, like she might not want the answer to that question.

The officer holds a hand out to her and, when Fauna doesn’t take it, he tries to do the same to Jay. He’s grateful the camera gives him somewhat of an excuse to leave Hodel hanging. “Steven. Steve. I’m…Tamar was my sister. Is my sister.”

Fauna sighs and Jay can see the weight that curves her shoulders downward.

Of course there’s another damn Hodel in this city.

Jay wonders if they’ll ever get out of that web.

 

* * *

 

The last time Fauna had left home, she’d known it would be for good. She’d outgrown her place in Sparks, her home with Jimmie Lee. She’d outgrown the person that she was there, suddenly uncertain of who she was and how she was supposed to start over.

She’d gone back to Los Angeles like a child following breadcrumbs, retracing her steps in hopes of finding her way out of the forest again.

Fauna feels like a part of her is still looking, peeking in corners or under mismatched furniture, like the girl she was before is going to still be there, crumpled among the dust. Like she can fit the missing pieces back into her chest and figure out who she should be.

Now, Fauna knows that the woman she should be is no longer in Sparks. At least Jimmie Lee was right about that. She’s bigger than what she left behind.

And here, in Los Angeles, she can be what she always wanted to be back in Sparks.

Normal.

There’s nothing more normal than tying an apron around her waist and sliding another pin into her hair before pushing open the swinging door and stepping behind the counter of the diner that employed her the same day Fauna stepped off the bus. Two years later, they haven’t fired her and she hasn’t quit and that all seems good enough for now.

The diner is relatively empty this afternoon. In this heat, Fauna thinks, no one wants to be inside, especially not in a place that smells like grease and feels like an oven. The other waitress on the floor, Stacey, is taking orders and smiling, leaving Fauna with little other choice but to grab the plastic tray and start cleaning off tables. It’s mindless, which is exactly what she needs right now.

Because Fauna isn’t sure that she could keep anything straight in her head right now. Not with thoughts of Steve Hodel crowding out everything else.

Her uncle. But also, her brother.

A thought that makes Fauna want to throw up all over the newly mopped black and white checkers on the floor.

They hadn’t said much, then, standing outside the house where people had died only days before. It had seemed fitting though to meet him there, in that place of death, since they’d both come from a place exactly like that.

There had been too many people around. The balding, fat officer had been watching them without bothering to hide his interest and Fauna had felt like the world was getting smaller, shrinking down to a pinpoint and making it hard to breathe. And Jay had been there, of course, because Jay was always there. And he’d known, like he always seemed to know, that she couldn’t breathe, and that the moment was a riptide threatening to pull her under.

Steve had seemed almost grateful when Jay had made to steer Fauna back toward the car, both of them muttering half-meant comments about bad timing and seeing each other again. The only thing Fauna had thought to say as they’d driven back to Jay’s apartment was, “you didn’t get your pictures,” which had only made Jay scoff.

And now, she’s here. Because here is normal.

Because _she_ is normal.

And normal people do not feel like they need a visual aid to understand their family tree.

Fauna wipes down the tables with enough force to leave them shining, ignoring Stacey’s pointed looks and nose twitching for gossip.

Instead, Fauna cleans. She sweeps. She does dishes in the back. She waits on a tired looking mom with three little girls, all dressed in matching bows and dresses, who sit quietly in the booth and watch their mother as she orders for them with a cigarette dangling from her fingers.

And she doesn’t think about Steve Hodel.

Until Fauna steps out of the kitchen, balancing four plates on her forearms to find Steve Hodel standing by the door.

He looks uncertain, his officer’s hat dangling from his fingers, uniform rumpled from the heat and the day he’s undoubtedly had. They make eye-contact and Steve offers her a tentative smile. Fauna is relieved to have the excuse to turn away, to plaster fake smile on her face as she drops plates in front of the little girls and refills the mother’s coffee.

But Fauna can’t ignore him forever. Especially not when Stacey finds her behind the counter, where Fauna is busying herself with making another pot of coffee. “That guy wants to be in your section. You gonna wait on him?”

Fauna wipes her hands on her apron. “Sure.”

Stacey snaps her gum. “You didn’t tell me you got a new guy. I kinda liked that other one.” She bumps against Fauna like they’re girlfriends preparing to have a sleepover. “You like ‘em a little older, huh?”

Fauna glares at Stacey, causing the other girl’s smile to falter. Fauna steps around her, heading toward the booth where Steve sits by himself, his hat sitting on the opposite side of the booth. “What can I get you?” She keeps her eyes on the pad in her hands.

“I thought…I thought we might be able to talk,” Steve says. “What time is your shift up?”

Fauna lifts her gaze. “How did you find out I worked here?”

Steve gives her a sheepish smile and she tries to find herself in his features. She looks for Tamar. And for Hodel. For the thread that connects them all together. “I might have used my resources for personal reasons.” When Fauna doesn’t say anything, Steve persists, “Can you sit? I feel like we need to talk?”

She thinks about lying or turning him away. Telling him to leave. “I have a break coming up.”

Steve looks relieved, nodding. “Great. How about a coffee until then? And dinner, my treat.”

She debates telling him she wouldn’t eat anything from this place but settles on just bringing him the coffee.

Fauna finishes up with the mother and her children, pocketing the meager tip before taking her time clearing off the table. The diner is empty aside from Steve and one other table and Fauna figures that every second is only going to make it more obvious that she’s avoiding returning to his table. So she hangs up her apron, taking a deep breath before stepping out into the dining area once more.

Steve smiles at her, as though relieved that she didn’t just completely disappear. Like there was somewhere else she might have hidden herself in this place. “So what’s good here?”

“Nothing,” Fauna tells him flatly. “You…were you close with Tamar?”

She’d like to be able to say that she hadn’t thought about Tamar in years. That she’d left her behind in Hawaii. But Fauna tries not to lie, even to herself.

Steve waggles a hand back and forth. “We have different mothers but the same father…” He clears his throat, looking pale all of the sudden. As though unwilling to call attention to the fact that they all have that in common. “But still. We were close. I’m two years older than she is but I always felt like we were friends and she wasn’t my annoying kid sister.”

“Do you ever talk to her?”

“Not really. Not since she…I guess disappeared probably isn’t the right word. I’m sure George had more to do with that than she did.” Steven frowns, leaning back against the booth. “I didn’t know about you…that you were here. How long have you been here?”

Fauna shrugs. “A while.”

“And you know about…all of it.” It’s not much of a question.

“Sometimes you catch a bad one.” It almost makes her smile, thinking of Jay.

Steve laughs, a short bark, putting his hands on the table as though to brace himself. “Yeah. Yeah I guess sometimes you do.”

Fauna lets her gaze flick toward the clock above the swinging kitchen door, the one that reads _It’s Always Time for Joe’s!_ in the center, with the numbers dancing around it. It would be easy to run, to blame her need to get back on the job. But she looks back at Steve. “Is he still here? George?”

Steve’s expression clouds. “No. Not the last I heard anyway. Chicago, maybe. Or San Francisco. The Philippines. He’s got a place there.  But he hasn’t been in Los Angeles in a while. Three, four years at least.”

Fauna turns his words over in her mind, not surprised by the twinge of relief that she feels. But there’s something else, too. Disappointment. Like she’d hoped, _maybe_ , to see George Hodel again.

Like he might be able to point her in the direction of the girl she’d left behind that night in the basement.

Steve looks like he’s going to say something more, but Fauna beats him to it. “Why did you come here?”

Steve manages to hide his surprise quickly. “I thought you might…we’re family. I thought you might want to know that you had an uncle out in this big city.” He smiles, but Fauna can tell it’s forced, like he wants her to believe him.

To believe that he’s here because he wants to extend a hand to her, rather than get a look at the sideshow attraction. This child of his sister and their father.

“I don’t think I need any more family,” Fauna tells him flatly.

Steve scoffs but it’s mirthless. “Yeah. Trust me, I get that. But, let me ask you something…you go around telling people your name is Hodel, right? That’s how I found you, anyway.”

She wishes that she could deny it, that she could give him another name. Greenwade. Faison. Singletary. Something pulled from her mind in that moment. Something to make his words less true.

Fauna shifts, the vinyl of the booth sticking to the backs of her thighs. “That’s who I am.”

“A Hodel,” Steve confirms. “Like me. So you can’t be that ashamed of who you are. Or where you come from. You aren’t trying to hide it.”

Fauna doesn’t look at him as she slides out of the booth. “I’ve got to get back to the work.”

“Fauna-”

“Sorry.” She hurries back toward the kitchen, letting the door whisper shut behind her.

 

* * *

 

The sound of the door unlocking is like a gunshot and Jay squeezes his eyes closed, wishing he’d thought to cover every single window in the place with a blanket before landing on the couch like a sack of flour. A sack of flour with a splitting headache.

He doesn’t even bother to lift his arm from across his face, figuring that the person who has stepped into the apartment is either Fauna or someone here to kill him and honestly Jay isn’t sure which he would prefer at this moment.

The apartment is hot and Jay can feel the sweat beading on his skin, making him long for both a frigid shower and some sort of machine that would transport him to Siberia. Or that would at least allow him to become someone else. The headache is pulsing white hot and angry between his eyes with every beat of his heart.

“Are you sick?” Fauna’s voice is soft, something Jay greatly appreciates. She’s always been able to read him better than anyone, has always been able to do what the rest of the world neither manages nor cares to do: speak softly, slow down, ease the pressure in his head.

Jay grunts. “Headache.”

“It probably has something to do with the bottle of whiskey on the floor.”

Another grunt is all Jay can muster.

Fauna hadn’t come back to the apartment after her shift at the diner and Jay can smell the unfamiliar wisps of her apartment clinging to her. The incense she says that one of her roommates burns constantly, the smell of her own soap and shampoo, which she doesn’t keep at his place. They never talk about things, never make a solid plan about when Fauna will stay the night because Jay thinks that’s a territory that neither of them really want to cross into. Still, the night had been long and the voices in his head had had plenty to say and Jay thinks the only thing he has energy for now is to lay, sprawled and heavy, on this ratty couch and hope he doesn’t roll off.

“Here.” Jay reaches out with his other hand in the direction of Fauna’s voice, his fingers knocking against the glass that she’s offering him. “I brought food.”

Jay peeks one eye open to see Fauna standing in his kitchen, still wearing her apron from the diner, digging through a brown bag. The idea of eating the greasy pile of ingredients that can barely be called food both repulses him and makes his stomach rumble.

It isn’t until they’ve both managed to finish most of their food that Jay breaks the silence. “They found more bodies.”

Fauna swallows and her nose crinkles in a brief flash of disappointment. “I saw Steve Hodel again yesterday.”

Jay isn’t sure what type of chess game they’re playing, or which of them just got the checkmate. He wonders if that’s why Fauna decided not to come back here last night or if he’s completely stupid for even wondering something like that.

Instead, Jay can feel his headache starting to pulse again, his palms sweating the way they used to do when he held the government-issued gun and thought about how the people around him might die for him or vice versa. There are times when Korea feels as far away as it truly is. There are moments where he feels like he’s never left.

“What did he want?”

The look Fauna gives him is as soft as her voice. “Just to talk.”

Jay wills himself to relax, to leave the person he was behind. He tries to concentrate on the crappy apartment, the heat in the room, the unfinished food still on his plate.

“What other bodies?” Fauna asks.

“Husband and wife, storeowners or something. The police think it might be related, because of the way they were…because of how they found them. What the killers did.” Jay pinches the bridge of his nose, wishing it were easy to will his headache away too.

He lies back onto the couch, resuming his previous position of suffering in silence with one arm draped across his eyes. Jay thinks there’s some aspirin around the apartment somewhere, or maybe even some more whiskey. But it seems safer to just lie here, at least for the moment.

Jay manages not to jump when Fauna comes to lie beside him and her weight on his chest is oddly comforting in a way that he never imagined another person could be. A weight that wasn’t a burden, just a reminder, proof that he isn’t anywhere but where he is.

 

* * *

 

When Fauna wakes up, she’s still curled against Jay’s side, his arm draped across her, keeping them both from tumbling off the edge of the couch. The apartment is dark aside from the splash of orange casting shadows across the floor. She lays still, listening to the rumble of Jay’s breathing, thinking about what he had said about the other bodies discovered. Steven Hodel had said that George was gone, vanished into the ether, somewhere far from Los Angeles.

Fauna figures that should make her feel better. Relieved. If not for herself then for the fact this this new crime, the one no one can stop talking about, isn’t his handiwork.

But it doesn’t make her feel better.

It just reminds her that he isn’t the only monster out there.

She’s just the daughter of a killer in a city full of them and it’s all too easy for her to hear Steve Hodel’s voice in her head again. _You can’t be that ashamed of who you are_. Fauna isn’t sure that ashamed is the right word.

Afraid, maybe.

Fauna closes her eyes, tucking herself against Jay’s side again, though she knows that it’s going to be impossible for her to fall asleep again. Not now, that her mind is wide awake, showing her pictures of the smiling blonde on the front page of the paper, conjuring up images of what the other bodies looked like, mixing them all with the crime scene photos she’d only recently been brave enough to search out of Elizabeth Short.

Later, when Jay wakes up and mumbles something about going into the bedroom, Fauna pretends to have been asleep this whole time, just so Jay doesn’t think to ask her what has been on her mind.

Though, she thinks he could probably guess, if he really put his mind to it.

Eventually, Fauna falls back asleep, her mind blessedly empty of white sheets spotted in red and smiling women killed by men who wanted to be special. Different. Remembered. When she wakes up again, the bed is empty beside her and Fauna can already smell coffee brewing in the kitchen. She dresses in an old shirt of Jay’s that hangs long enough to serve as a dress in the confines of the apartment and when she walks into the living room, she finds Jay kneeling on the floor in the midst of a sea of black and white.

“What are you doing?”

Jay looks almost guilty as he looks up at her, reaching for one of the photographs as though to flip it over before thinking better of it and just putting his hands on his knees. “The paper sent these over.”

Fauna steps closer, careful to avoid contact with any of the photographs, briefly reminded of the game she’d played as a little girl, desperate to avoid contact with any of the many cracks on the sidewalk. So many superstitions that she’d has a child and none of them had helped her avoid any of the events that would come later. She sits next to Jay, tucking her legs underneath herself as she reaches for one of the photographs. Blood on the wall, used to outline some nonsensical message.

“It was like this in both crime scenes,” Jay says, “this writing. But now the police are saying there’s no connection.”

Fauna lifts her eyebrows as she looks at Jay. “Why do I get the feeling that you don’t agree with them.”

Jay gives her a sheepish smile, one that Fauna imagines would have charmed many a girl in the past. “I’m just going to provide an alternative view point.”

Fauna sets the photograph aside, forgoing any perusal of the others. “Jay Singletary, you’re going to get yourself in trouble.”

“Yeah, but it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I probably need to stir up some shit, don’t you think?”

Rolling her eyes, Fauna gets to her feet and goes into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee. She holds it between her hands as she watches Jay, there on the floor, sorting through black and white moments of the end of someone’s life.

“Do you think people still remember George Hodel?” Fauna stares down into the contents of the mug to avoid looking at Jay when he looks in her direction.

“What do you mean?”

“Do they remember who he was? What he did?” Fauna forces herself to look at Jay. “Is that what they think of when they hear my name?”

“Is that what you think of?”

Fauna shrugs. “How can I not?”

Jay tosses one of the photographs aside and Fauna watches as it comes to rest on top of one of the others. “I mean, his son is a police officer. That’s gotta be a good sign, right?” The smile he gives her is forced for her benefit, she knows. “He’s not letting it hold him back.”

Fauna tries to imitate the same smile Jay had just given her. “Maybe it’s a good thing, having an uncle who is a police officer. So someone can bail you out when you get yourself into trouble.”

Jay waves a hand, dismissing her concern. “Hey, I’m just going to be writing a little newspaper article. When has _that_ ever gotten anyone in trouble?”

Fauna smirks, putting off her answer by sipping from her coffee.

 

* * *

 

Jay is no stranger to showing up places where he’s not wanted. In fact, he would say that’s kind of his trademark. He almost feels like his old self, with the police lobbing threats in his direction while threatening to grab him by the scruff of the neck and toss him out on his ass.

He’d kinda missed all this.

Though, Jay wishes that he’d at least gotten some good information for the story that he’s cooking up before the police caught wise to his game.

It had gone fine, at first. He’d been asking the standard questions with the disinterested air of a hardened Los Angeles reporter, the type of guy who’d seen murdered starlets before and couldn’t be bothered to spare the ten cents it cost to buy the paper about them.

But it had all gone south when we’d started asking about the second murders and now, well…

Now comes the out on his ass part.

“Hey man, not the camera. Seriously, why do you guys always go for the camera?” Jay makes an attempt to grab it back from the grizzled, exasperated police officer who snatched it away from him when Jay had tried to use it to take a picture of, admittedly, some documents he probably shouldn’t have tried to take a picture of.

But you live and you learn.

Jay’s attempts to retrieve his camera are thwarted by the other officer, a younger guy clearly trying to earn his stripes judging by the way that he’s currently manhandling Jay. “Reporters.” The guy sneers like he’s about to spit on Jay’s shoes. “We should lock all of you up, if you ask me.”

“Well, no one did, pal,” Jay mumbles, only to get a hand shoved between his shoulder blades, throwing him off balance. “Hey! I’m going, seriously. I guess I can always write a story about police brutality instead, huh?”

The officer grabs him, yanking him roughly backward. “What was that? Huh?”

Jay is about to protest his innocence when one of the office doors swings open and his day gets much, much worse.

Because Steve Hodel walks out, his already on his hips, scowl in place. “What the hell is going on out here?”

And then, just so Jay really gets the message that the universe is out to kick him in the ass when he’s already down, Fauna walks out behind Steve Hodel.

When Fauna sees him there, her eyebrows lift but her expression is far from surprised. Jay figures that he would find her reaction humorous if the situation was different. Right now he doesn’t feel much like laughing.

“This guy’s been poking around,” the more senior officer says, the one still holding Jay’s camera. “We’re going to let him cool his heels a while with the rest of the guys in lock up.”

Jay tries to wrench himself free. “Hey! You guys were talking to _me_ , remember that? Huh?”

Jay can see a hint of recognition on Steve’s face and understanding blooms across his face when Fauna leans forward to whisper something in his ear. Jay can feel his neck starting to burn, embarrassment creep down his spine and pool in his stomach.

The shame only deepens when Steve shakes his head, waving a dismissive hand in their direction. “Just toss him out. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

Jay ignores Fauna’s gaze as he lets the upstart cop roughly push him forward, prodding him toward the door. And if he literally tumbles back down the stairs and out into the parking lot, well, it’s just because he loses his footing.

“Shit,” Jay grumbles, straightening his posture. He tries to fix his now rumpled button-up, though he has a feeling that he’s not going to look all that professional thanks to the LAPD’s treatment of reporters. “Screw you.”

It’s not like anyone is around to hear it, but it makes Jay feel better.

He’s halfway across the parking lot, deciding to cut his losses and ignore pretty much everything that just happened over the last five minutes, when he hears footsteps hurrying after him. It’s his pride, more than anything, that keeps him from turning around.

“Jay. Wait.”

All it takes is the sound of her voice to get him to stop.

“I think you forgot this.”

When Jay turns around to face her, Fauna is holding his camera and he can see a sparkle of amusement in her eyes even though the rest of her face is impassive, the look of a woman who knows how to keep her secrets.

Jay waves a hand, dismissing both Fauna and her attempts to reunite him with his camera. “You might as well just smash it on the sidewalk for all the good it’s going to do.”

He turns his back on her, squinting against the midday sun that glints off the dozens of cars passing without pause or interest in the two people on the sidewalk. He’s starting to wish that he hadn’t parked his car a block away.

“Jay.”

Annoyance flashes through him, fueled not only by Fauna’s insistent tone but also his inability to ignore her. “What?” Jay snaps, whirling back to face her. “What? What do you want?”

Fauna shoves the camera against his chest and Jay manages to hide his wince by scrambling to keep the camera from falling to the sidewalk after all. “You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t ask for your help,” Jay retorts and he wonders if anyone has ever managed to actually salvage their pride while starting an argument like that. “I was working. Handling things. Everything was fine.”

“Is that how it looked to you?” Fauna crosses her arms over her chest.

Jay turns around, muttering, waving her away. He doesn’t make it a step before he thinks better of it, turning back so that they’re face to face. “What were you doing there, anyway? Steve Hodel your new best friend, huh? How are you guys related, again? Sorry I can’t keep track.”

Fauna’s head snaps back like he’s just slapped her. “Screw you, Jay,” she bites off with more vehemence than Jay figures he’s ever managed in his life.

This time, it’s Fauna who turns on her heel, storming away from him and back toward the station. Jay exhales, scrubbing a hand across his face before shaking his head. “Hey. Fauna, wait.”

He has to jog to close the distance between them, grabbing her wrist to pull her to a stop. She jerks herself free but doesn’t go stomping away. When Fauna looks at him, her expressionless face is marred only by the flash of anger Jay can see in her eyes.

“Sorry. Okay, I’m sorry,” Jay says quickly, before he lets himself believe that he doesn’t have to say those words. “Look, I can be a real piece of shit sometimes.”

Fauna’s expression doesn’t change and even her eyes are cold and closed off, shutting Jay out as firmly as a locked window. “Is that supposed to be news to me?”

“I just…” Jay shakes his head. “Why were you there anyway? To talk to him?”

“Why does it bother you so much?”

“Why?” Jay scoffs, gesturing back toward the station like Steve Hodel is just going to come waltzing out and put himself on display. “ _Why_? Maybe because the last Hodel you met tried to kill you? Maybe because his dad cut up women and threw them into ditches? Maybe _that’s_ why!”

Fauna’s eyes narrow. “So he’s guilty, just because he’s a Hodel?”

Jay barks out a laugh. “I mean, it’s not looking great for him in the genetics department!”

It takes Jay only a second to realize his mistake. It’s in her eyes again, that little peek into her mind. The way that Fauna flinches, however minutely, hurt in her gaze.

But, it’s not her hurt that Jay feels like a bullet in his chest. It’s the flicker of resignation in her eyes.

“Wait. That’s not what I meant. Fauna-” She’s already walking away from him but it’s easy for Jay to close the distance between them. “Wait. Just wait.” He puts a hand on her shoulder and Fauna doesn’t move away from him. But she doesn’t turn around either.

“I just don’t know about that guy,” Jay says. “That’s all I’m saying. I’m just trying to protect you.”

Fauna doesn’t say anything at first. Jay can feel the steadiness of her breathing, the rise and fall of her shoulders beneath his hand. When she finally does turn away, he lets his arm fall back, uselessly, at his side.

“Maybe there’s nothing else that you have to protect me from,” Fauna says softly. “Maybe you don’t have to protect me anymore. Maybe we can just…be.”

Jay isn’t sure how to admit that he might be able to do that. To just… _be_.

That, maybe, after all this time, he’s forgotten how.

 

* * *

 

Fauna doesn’t ask for permission so much as she mentions to Jay that she is planning to go speak with Steve Hodel again. Their previous attempt at a conversation had ended before it had even gotten started, thanks to a certain intrepid reporter who can’t seem to ever keep his nose clean.

It’s been a week since that previous attempt. A week since she and Jay butted heads in the parking lot. A week since the pretty blonde and her tragic story graced every newspaper article. A week since the city cared about something like that.

So she tells him, because it seems to matter, that she’s planning to go see Steve Hodel before her shift at the diner. Jay grunts, nods, and neither of them say anything about the worry that Jay lets go unspoken.

Fauna isn’t afraid of Steve Hodel.

She’s not afraid of George Hodel, either.

But she’s not sure that she can explain to Jay what she _is_ afraid of.

Fauna hopes that’s what Steve will be able to help her with.

The woman sitting behind the desk in front of the station asks her if she has an appointment to see Sergeant Hodel and Fauna isn’t sure how to answer her. Just like she’s not entirely sure how to express why she’s there at all. “He’s my...I’m here to...he’s my uncle.”

The woman’s expression softens as she becomes little more interested in the girl standing across from her. “Just take a seat, dear. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

Fauna sits, tapping her shoe against the polished floor. She tries not to think about the people who have sat in this seat before her, who have come to this station for far less pleasant reasons than what has brought her here now.

“Fauna?” Steve is standing in front of her, the nose of his shoes inches from her own. “I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“Sorry.” Fauna stands, slipping the strap of her purse over her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have just dropped by. You’re probably busy. I can-”

Steve holds up a hand to stop her. “I’m glad you’re here. I was hoping you might be interested in talking after all.”

Fauna looks past Steve toward the woman behind the desk, who is looking on with thinly veiled interest. When she catches Fauna’s eye, she quickly looks away, picking up her pen and flipping open a file. “Maybe we could…”

“There’s a coffee place on the corner,” Steve says with a nod. “Let me buy you a cup.”

Fauna follows after him, grateful to be away from the prying eyes of the woman and the other officers in the station. She lets Steve order their coffee, the knots in her stomach sending a clear message to her brain that the last thing she’s going to do is take a single sip of it.

Not that Steve seems to notice, sitting across from her with a smile on his face, his posture relaxed and easy. “How’s your reporter friend? Hopefully keeping his nose out of trouble?”

Fauna purses her lips, feeling a wave of protectiveness toward Jay. “He’s fine. Working on an important piece right now.”

Steve nods. “Good. I know it seems harsh, what we did, but it’s important to-”

“I didn’t come to talk about that case, or Jay,” Fauna interjects quickly. “I don’t...I didn’t come to talk about that.”

Steve looks almost relieved. “You want to talk about your mother.”

“Tamar? No.” Fauna shakes her head. “No, I’ve already had enough of Tamar.”

Steve doesn’t bother to hide his interest. “I didn’t realize you two...she’s not back in L.A. is she?”

“No. I...we met in Hawaii. A few years ago. It was…” Fauna isn’t sure that there are words that truly explain how she’d felt, there on the beach, with Tamar’s words crashing in her head like the waves against the shore. Or how she’d felt later, how the truth of who she was hadn’t been left behind when they’d left Hawaii. How she’d still had to carry it with her.

Steve winces, shifting in his chair. “I can imagine.”

Fauna offers him a tight grimace that she thinks might pass for a smile. “I don’t talk about it often.”

“I got that at the diner,” Steve tells her. “Which is why I’m surprised to see you here now.”

It’s almost impossible to hear the sound of Steve’s voice over the pounding of her own heart. “Do you ever…” She swallows and there’s a knot there at the base of her throat, making it hard to breathe. “Are you ever afraid?”

There’s a tension in Steve’s shoulders that Fauna recognizes. One that she understands. The weight that comes from carrying something around and desperately hoping that no one else notices. “Of what?”

“That you might be like him?”

Even Jay, Fauna knows, believes in the power of genetics.

The sounds of the coffee shop settle around them: the chatter of the patrons sitting at the adjoining tables, the rumble of the machines as they work. And the pounding of Fauna’s own heart, which she can only hope no one else around her can hear.

She wonders how they might look to the others. It almost makes her smile thinking how never in a million years would anyone imagine the topic of their conversation. To everyone else, Fauna knows she looks normal.

If only it was as easy to feel that way inside.

Finally, Steve clears his throat. “I used to think a lot about Tamar. How I could have helped her. Maybe if I stood up to our dad more...or if I was around...Tamar was like Hodel’s chosen one. Which, I mean, that only makes it worse. But I blamed myself a lot...especially when she got pregnant and...they sent her away and I never really saw her after that.”

Fauna sits, frozen, letting his words wash over her. How it must have been, there in that house. For Steve. For Tamar. Especially for Tamar, for any of the women in Hodel’s life. Even with her, his first instinct had been to hurt, to ruin, to tear her to pieces.

She looks at her hands and wonders if her fingers are meant to do the same.

“I think I’ve tried to be opposite of the man he was,” Steven says and Fauna lifts her eyes to his face. “I want to help people. I’ve tried, anyway. It’s probably harder for you...finding all this out at once.”

Fauna figures a scoff and an eye roll will serve as a sufficient answer.

“I don’t really know you all that well, Fauna,” Steve says, “but you seem like a nice girl. Like Tamar. Who she could have been if George hadn’t gotten to her. Don’t let him control you. That’s what I’ve had to keep telling myself.”

Fauna touches the cold pit of fear in her stomach, the same fear that’s been coiled there for years, poking at it like she used to do with the bruises she earned in childhood. It doesn’t feel smaller, calmed by Steve’s words and reassurances. It’s still settled there, a piece of her.

“I used to think I wanted to know exactly who I was,” Fauna says softly. “But now I just wish I could forget.”

 

* * *

 

There’s a dull throbbing behind his eyes, a constant pulse that matches the beating of his heart. Jay blames it on the drink he’s been nursing. On the sound of the traffic outside his window. On the story he’s been trying to piece together for the past week. On his own general unluckiness. But nothing seems to be able to convince the headache to leave him alone.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, his pen between his fingers even as his head rests in his hands, when he hears the lock click on the front door and Fauna walks in. She looks like she always does whenever she comes over straight from work: tired and inches away from giving up on life completely, with her hair twisted into a ponytail and her apron still around her waist. Jay hadn’t been expecting her, he never lets himself expect her, but the sight of her makes him sit up straighter, dropping his pen onto the middle of his scrawled notes.

“Long day?” Jay questions, trying infuse a bit of teasing into his tone.

Fauna only smirks at him, the corners of her lips curling up in a feline way that he imagines that she learned from Jimmie Lee. “I hate everyone.”

“War and waitressing: the best ways to see the worst in people,” Jay deadpans.

Fauna lifts her eyebrows in a silent agreement.

The air in the apartment seems to shift when Fauna says, “I was able to talk with Steve today. About...about George Hodel.”

A part of Jay wants to ask why she bothers asking any questions about that man and the thing he did. Things that the city already seems content to bury under the other skeletons in its closet.

But the other part of Jay understands that need to ask. To never stop asking. The find some kind of truth.

Just like he understands what it feels like to find that truth and find it sharp and difficult to carry.

“Maybe I made a mistake coming here,” Fauna says. “Maybe I should have just stayed in Sparks. I should have listened to Jimmie Lee. I should have just stayed Pat.”

Jay can’t stop the smile from flashing across his face. “You are not a Pat. That’s a terrible name.”

Fauna tosses Jay’s pen directly at his forehead.

“That’s the thing about the truth. You can’t avoid it forever.”

Fauna’s eyes narrow. “But what good has it ever gotten me? Or you? Maybe it’s better sometimes to just...not know.”

Jay shakes his head. “You don’t really believe that.”

When Fauna looks at him, her eyes are cracked open, wider and more vulnerable than he’s ever seen. She looks stripped bare, sitting there across from him at his unbalanced kitchen table. “What if I’m just like them, Jay? Like all of them? What if that’s who I am?”

Jay doesn’t say anything because he knows that she doesn’t need him to.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. Like he took some part of me after all. And left some things of himself behind.”

That’s a feeling that Jay can understand. He knows the cloudiness that can slip through the mind, obscuring everything that had once seemed so solid, so steadfast. He knows what it’s like to wake up and have a hard time remembering who you are.

But he also knows Fauna. He knows the woman sitting there across from him. Fauna, with her sharp eyes and wit to match. He knows how it feels to have her weight against him, knows the pressure of her hand against his face, knows the feeling of her breath against the shell of his ear as her whispered words clear the fog in his mind. He knows the thin scar that runs along the curve of her hip, put there by Jimmie Lee when Fauna was a little girl. Just like he knows how her voice can be as heady as any sip of whiskey and so can her laugh.

Maybe that’s all anyone ever truly is: the pieces that other people use to make a whole.

“I know who you are, Fauna.”

Fauna doesn’t say anything. She just reaches her hand across the table and Jay covers it with his own.

“How can you be sure?” Fauna asks, her voice tremulous, like she isn’t sure that she wants the answer.

“Because it’s the truth. Pat.”

Fauna groans, pulling her hand away so that she can slap Jay’s forearm. But she’s smiling.

 

* * *

 

The diner is decorated for Christmas even though it’s only two days into December and Fauna is already sick of pulling stray pieces of tinsel out of people’s eggs. But being in the Christmas spirit makes people better tippers, so Fauna doesn’t mind that part of the holiday so much. It’s almost easy to get swept up into the spirit of things, with the radio playing carols and people coming in with shopping bags full to bursting. It makes her think about Jimmie Lee and back home and whether she should try and see her mother for the holidays.

But when she thinks of Sparks, she thinks about how quiet and small it is there and how the noise of Los Angeles makes it easier for her to think and to continue on and just to be.

Fauna is humming along with “White Christmas” - even though the line _just like the ones I used to know_ always makes her feel a little bit like a liar- when she steps out from the kitchen and sees Jay sitting in one of the booths by the window. Stacey is already standing by him, flashing a smile with too much teeth, shark-like in her interest.

“Oh, Fauna,” Stacey says a little too innocently when Fauna comes up to join them. “I was just trying to get Jay some coffee. So he didn’t have to wait.”

“I think I can handle pouring some coffee,” Fauna assures her. “I’m sure your other tables will appreciate your attentiveness.”

Stacey slinks off with a little bit of side-eye as Fauna sits in the booth across from Jay. “I saw your byline this morning.”

The paper had been sitting on the counter of the diner when she’d come in and Fauna had almost tucked the front page into the pocket of her apron. Though, judging by the smile creeping across Jay’s face, Fauna assumes that there isn’t going to be any shortage of papers at the apartment.

“The papers know good work when they see it.” But there’s no hiding the pleased look on Jay’s face or the sparkle in his eye. “I’m just happy to be doing my civic duty. Bringing the truth to the masses.”

“Right.” Fauna leans back in the booth. “I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that you were right all along about the connection and the police looking after the wrong people.”

Jay just winks at her.

Fauna had read the paper while waiting for the coffee to brew, even though she’d gotten snatches of the story over the past several months while looking over Jay’s shoulder or listening to him mutter to himself while pacing the apartment.

**Hippies Arrested for Starlet Murder**. The story is almost too crazy to believe. If Fauna didn’t have a few crazy stories of her own, she might be as boggled by it as the two men in suits she’d waited on earlier, who had ignored her almost completely in favor of discussing the murder in the same excited tones everyone is probably using across the city right now.

Everyone loves a tragedy that doesn’t happen to them.

“My editor wants me to keep working on the story,” Jay says. “When they go to trial and stuff.”

“You don’t think you’ll get tired of seeing your name on the front page?” Fauna teases.

Jay sighs, stretching his arms across the back of the booth. “I’m sure I’ll manage.”

Fauna offers him a smile, soft and real, quiet in its sincerity. “I’m proud of you.”

Jay nods, a thank you. “Finally paid off, huh.”

“I always knew it would,” Fauna says quietly. “You always find a way to make people listen to you.”

“I think this actually might be a first,” Jay scoffs.

Fauna looks at him. “Seriously. You tell the stories that matter. _Her_ story. All their stories. So people don’t forget them. That’s what you do, Jay. You make people remember.”

Jay looks out the diner window, watching as people on the sidewalk rush past without a second thought. The lives that pass outside have always fascinated Fauna, always made her wonder where they’re going, what they’re doing, what truths they know that no one else does. She used to do the same thing back in Sparks: stare outside her bedroom window or the windows of the school building or the hospital where she worked, trying to imagine a life beyond there. A place where she was different, where all the lives were different from everything she knew.

Jay nods, once, his only acknowledgement to her comment. But Fauna hears what he doesn’t say, what he can’t.

She watches him, studying the angle of his face, how the black eyes and cuts and bruises that always seemed to pepper his face years ago have long heeled. How, in their place, are shadows in his eyes and a wariness that he carries beneath the handsome charm that everyone else seems to stop at.

“Do you ever think about that night?” Fauna asks and even though Jay doesn’t look at her she knows that he’s listening. That he always listens. “The last time we thought we’d see each other?”

“All the time.”

Their voices are quiet, barely audible over the din of conversation from the other booths and the sounds of the kitchen in the back. But to Fauna, it feels like they’re the only people left, that everyone else has fallen silent around them.

“Maybe…maybe one day you might tell that story after all,” Fauna suggests. “My story.”

He’d promised her that night he wouldn’t tell it, wouldn’t write about her or Hodel or anything that had mattered so much in that moment. And he’d kept his promise all these years later. She’s still the girl she was then, the one that disappeared into the night.

But maybe she shouldn’t be.

Jay finally looks at her and as his eyes settle on her, Fauna feels seen.

But that’s not unusual when it comes to Jay Singletary.

“Fauna.” The voice is Stacey’s, heavy with annoyance and impatience and it shatters that illusion that there’s no one else in the world. “You’ve got other tables. Don’t think I’m going to wait on them too.”

Stacey breezes past the booth and Fauna thinks if she were sitting a little closer to the edge that she might be within range of the half-eaten food on the plates that Stacey is carrying back to the kitchen.

Fauna slides out of the booth with an eye-roll, which Jay returns with a smirk. She puts her hand on Jay’s shoulder, letting it linger for a second, before slipping back into her waitress persona, the one that is all smiles and endless patience, hoping for a good tip and a quick end to this shift.

Jay lifts his mug to his lips, sipping from the lukewarm coffee as he watches Fauna become a version of herself that he doesn’t often see. He thinks about the girl that she was when he first met her and how she’d already learned, by the time their paths crossed, to put up her guard and answer questions with some of her own. The people she’s waiting on now have no idea that the Fauna they’re seeing isn’t the one that Jay knows, the one who stepped out of the shadows of the Sowden House and disappeared into the night.

It seems strange to think that it was that night that’s brought them to this moment. The night that Jay thought would probably kill them both.

He’d gone there to kill Hodel. He’d gone expecting to see that he was too late, again, always too late. He’d gone expecting to carry the heavy reminder of a dead girl he hadn’t been able to save with him as he’d either gone back to Billis or started running knowing that he would never stop.

But instead he’d found her, bloody and alive. Whole. Free.

And he’d felt her hands on his face and heard her voice, telling him what he’d so desperately needed someone to tell him since Korea. That he didn’t have to do this. Someone had put a gun in his hand and told him how to kill and only Fauna had been able to remind him how to stop.

Jay wonders what he would have thought if he’d known, that night, that he would be here now. That he would have stray pieces of Fauna’s clothes in his apartment and a pair of her shoes forgotten under his bed. That he would know what it felt like to listen to her sing along to a record on his turntable while he started to muddle his way through writing again. That he would see her smile and hear her laugh and that he would do those things too and that this city would start to feel like home again rather than like an animal trying to swallow him up between its teeth.

That he would have a byline in the paper, that he would have a purpose again, that there would, eventually, be people that would listen to what he had to say and take his words as truth.

He wonders what Fauna would have thought if she’d known that she would be back in this city again, that she wouldn’t have to be someone’s wife or mother by this point just to escape from her mother’s house. That she could escape herself, just like she had done that night. That she would be whole, again, and free.

That they both would.

As though sensing his thoughts, or maybe just his eyes on her, Fauna turns to look at Jay over her shoulder, smiling.

Jay reaches into his bag and pulls out his notepad and starts writing.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously I've played around with the timeline of events because "I Am the Night" did the same thing so I thought why not! Steve Hodel is a real person and he really worked as a police officer, though he didn't suspect his father as the Dahlia murderer until years and years later. He also suspected George Hodel of being the Zodiac Killer, which is totally crazy but I couldn't resist a little nod to that. 
> 
> Also I think Tamar was the oldest child but hey that's the beauty of fanfic. 
> 
> The title comes from the song "Why Georgia."


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